Personal shields and miniguns solve a lot of problems.

[Burba]

I have not watched a ton of Star Trek just bits here and there but I don't think I have seen either of these things in the TV shows or movies. Why don't they use them more?

[cap-boulanger]

The lack of personal shields might be an issue of being able to miniaturize them and their power source, to a point of making them not too burdensome to carry. However, we have them in-game.

As for miniguns, I'm not entirely sure what you classify as a "minigun" in order to say distinctly. Starfleet (the good guys) mostly uses energy beam weapons (like overpowered lasers) that can be reprogrammed, so they are not just weapons but also tools.

However, I would suspect that the rapid-firing Jem'Hadar rifles (used mainly by villains, in several episodes in the later seasons of Deep Space Nine) would qualify; there's also two sightings (one in TOS and one in TNG) of Thompson submachine guns. Both of those also exist in game (though I am not sure if the Tommy is currently obtainable; I have it from an old event reward).

[Burba]

Oh This big gun I found in game says it is a anti-proton minigun. It just looks like a really big energy weapon though. Maybe like a LMG beam weapon. In the shows they seem to just use pistols.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Burba:

Oh This big gun I found in game says it is a anti-proton minigun. It just looks like a really big energy weapon though. Maybe like a LMG beam weapon. In the shows they seem to just use pistols.

Yes, as I was trying to say in my previous comment, there's a lot of things in game that aren't in the shows.

Still don't know what your definition of "minigun" is though. Not a term I'm familiar with other than in the game, so can't really say for sure if they exist in the shows or not.

[chemiman]

There is a ground weapon type called "Assault Minigun", I think he means those.

https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Phaser_weapons_(ground)#Minigun

[Agnithrax]

I was always and forever waiting for the bat'leth gag when TNG went up against the Borg. Some Fed Borg specialist or MACO type would mouth off to Worf about using swords in the age of ray guns and dour ol' Worf would give a gruff snarl and stomp off. Later during the inevitable surprise Borg attack mouthey duder would be pinned to a wall, phaser useless because they had his frequency and the assimilation prongs extracting to get him got; then choppo! Worf is at his side and takes the Borgies forearm off with his bat'leth. Worf looks at the guy with that wry sparkle in his eye helping him to his feet and says, naturally, "the Borg are well defensed against phasers, you should have brought your sword."

For that matter, they should have had a whole mes of .357 Magnums in the armory in case of Borg raiding parties transporting right through Fed shields like they always do. Or...miniguns, am I rght? I'm right. Still, if I'm up against a dozen Klingons with miniguns I'd much rather be packing a TOS box phaser as then it just comes down to who has the drop on who. One flick of the wrist and I beam 'em all baybee, it's all about the ray all day!

[Jaq]

Originally posted by cap-boulanger:

Still don't know what your definition of "minigun" is though. Not a term I'm familiar with other than in the game, so can't really say for sure if they exist in the shows or not.

I'm kind of confused why this confuses you. Every energy type in the game has an assault weapon with the word "minigun" in its name. They're easily identified by their very high rate of fire and "shoot-from-the-hip" firing stance.

In the real world, miniguns are Gatling guns shrunk down to a size and weight that can be carried by a single soldier. Miniature Gatling Gun = Minigun for short. Due to their vibration and weight, they are typically either fired from a mount or suspended at hip level by a shoulder strap, the latter of which resembles how they're used in STO.

To answer OP's question, I doubt they ever appeared in the shows or movies, or if they did it was probably only as a weapon a soldier was holding in the background. The game does try to incorporate every canonical weapon they can, but serious military gunfights are very rarely depicted in Star Trek particularly on the TV shows, so there isn't a huge amount of material to draw from and the game has had to create their own designs to fill in the blanks. Miniguns are also not really used that much in real life. They look incredibly cool in action, but the downsides greatly outweigh the upsides compared to traditional machine guns and assault rifles. Their usefulness is extremely situational. They'd only show up in a Star Trek movie for the spectacle of it, and because they have a bit more budget to animate the effects.

So no, Captain Picard never turned to Commander Riker and said, "this place is about to get lit, Numbah One" before unloading his phaser minigun on the crowd of onlookers at a seedy Orion strip club. But if you follow the Secrets of Nimbus episode arc in Star Trek Online, your character will get the opportunity to do just that!

[x1Heavy]

Star Trek is not much of a bang bang show. They bend over backwards alot in desperate situations before they finally stun the bad guy with a little zap on the phaser. IF there is no Mr Spock around to apply Mr Sleepy.

Reminds me of Johnny Sokko's Robot from Japan which ran in the 70's they do everything non lethal and fail on increasingly bad situations that threaten the Entire People before bringing out the 500 ton Janitor and go shoot stuff.

They did one time have a show where they broke out the mark three phaser rifles. They probably cut the things out of sticks and beer cans for the tv show as props. But it got our attention when they did that in the old series. I carry one of those in STO.

The biggest and most impactful mini gun type situation anywhere evah was in Aliens Original. The Marines set up two Miniguns with lots of Dakka (500 rounds each). The monsters came for them straight up that corridor.

We were treated to oh.. 15 seconds of violence minigun style until 500 became zero. Then more monsters came. You can remember the People in that Room getting pretty attentive at that point.

I did actually use the MiniPhaser assault gun in STO on ground until it became not upgraded enough to keep up with the increasingly strong hordes. Just makes noise until you die and respawn to do it again.

I type too much. So many words. Is there a MINIKEYBOARD? /snarky.

[cap-boulanger]

Originally posted by Jaq:

Originally posted by cap-boulanger:

Still don't know what your definition of "minigun" is though. Not a term I'm familiar with other than in the game, so can't really say for sure if they exist in the shows or not.

I'm kind of confused why this confuses you.

Probably because you didn't actually read what I wrote, even though you quoted it.

What I was getting at is : what, exactly, qualifies as being a minigun or not? Are the rapid-fire Jem'Hadar rifles we saw in several of the Dominion War (TV) episodes "miniguns" or not? Tommys?

I know that there are weapons in game that literally have the word "minigun" in their name, but weapons on TV and movie screens are often not explicitly named to the viewers, and without having *real-world* experience of what exactly the OP considers to be a "minigun", the question of whether they were ever on screen can't be accurately answered.

[Balanced Integer]

Didn't the Kelvin TImeline Khan use an assault minigun in Into Darkness? You know, in the big battle scene on Qo'Nos?

[VoodooMike]

Originally posted by Balanced Integer:

Didn't the Kelvin TImeline Khan use an assault minigun in Into Darkness? You know, in the big battle scene on Qo'Nos?

It was a Boolean Assault Cannon[sto.fandom.com] so... not technically a minigun.

[hackerx31337]

They did have the use of a personal shield on screen in an episode of TNG but it wasn't a purpose built one but rather one rigged up in an emergency and it was only good for something like 10 seconds. The events of STO take place around 40 years after the end of TNG. TOS also saw the usage of personal shield belts but they were for more for basic life support and light protection rather than protecting against weapons fire and honestly it was probablly so you could still easily tell the characters apart without a LOT of extra animation work. So that is easy enough to shrug off as they just didn't have the tech ready yet.

Phaser rifles were very rarely seen on TOS or TNG but they did exist in both shows. Rifles were used more prominently on Voyager when they were boarded. Where you saw or at least heard about heavier weapons was on DS9 especially once the Dominion war started and in the TNG movies. Not only was there far more usage of phaser rifles and the famous scene of Picard turning off the holodeck safeties and using a tommy gun but you also saw shoulder fired and vehicle mounted cannons used on the ground.

So yeah, Starfleet had bigger guns but they typically weren't used indoors and it makes sense given that a miss with a heavy weapon could mean blowing a hole in the hull and killing a bunch of the crew or going right through a wall and hitting a major power conduit or even worse the warp core and just blowing up the whole ship.